Acuity Inc.

Welcome to the Acuity Brands 2021 Investor Day.

Good morning and welcome to the Acuity Brands 2021 Investor Day and third quarter earnings update. As a reminder, some of our comments today may be forward-looking statements based on management's beliefs and assumptions and information currently available to management at this time. These beliefs are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties, many of which may be beyond our control. including those detailed in our periodic SEC filings. Please note that the company's actual results may materially differ from those anticipated, and we undertake no obligation to update these statements. Reconciliations of certain non-GAAP financial metrics with their corresponding GAAP measures are available in our 2021 third quarter earnings release and in the appendix of the accompanying Investor Day 2021 presentation, both of which are available on our Investor Relations website www.investors.acuitybrands.com After our financial update, there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions. If you wish to participate in the Q&A, please submit your question, your name and your company in the chat function. There is a live chat help function available to anyone experiencing technical difficulties. As a reminder, we are webcasting today's presentation live. Thank you for your interest in Acuity Brands. You will now hear from Neil Asch.

Welcome to the Acuity Brands Investor Update. We're really excited to be with you today to talk to you about the future of our company, to introduce you to our team, and to talk through the results of our fiscal third quarter 2021. So we're going to do it a little differently today. Rather than a couple of us and a lot of PowerPoint, we're going to introduce you to our broader team, and we're excited to do it. So first, we're going to talk to you about our lighting and lighting controls business with the team who runs it. Then we'll move on to our new intelligent spaces group. The team that's been assembled to develop and grow there is really impressive, and we're excited that you get to interact with them. After that, we'll dive in and talk about our culture, our impact on the environment, as well as how we actually run the company. And then finally, Karen will come and she'll talk to you about our capital allocation priorities and our results for the last fiscal quarter. So let's get started. As we look forward, our company is unique. Our lighting and lighting controls business is the market leader in North America. We've returned the business to growth, and we've increased the margins. How have we done that? We've done that through product and productivity improvements as we increase the vitality of our product portfolio, and we've brought the precision of a digital company to this business. As we look forward, our strategy for winning the next decade is very clear. We're going to increase the service levels in the industry. We're going to increase the amount of technology that's both in our products and in how we provide those services. As of today, we've created a new segment we call the Intelligent Spaces Group. That group has the opportunity to do exactly what its name says, finally make spaces intelligent. It's a collection of really valuable technology assets and some incredibly talented people who we've assembled to go prosecute the opportunity. is an open protocol and open source distribution technology which powers buildings. Atrius is the opportunity to create applications which make a real difference in those buildings and spaces. Our business is financially very efficient. We generate a lot of cash. And we can create a significant amount of value through capital allocation. Our capital allocation priorities are clear. We're going to grow our current businesses. We're going to grow through mergers and acquisitions. We're going to maintain our dividend. And when there's the opportunity, we're going to create value through share repurchase. We've also invested significantly in our culture. We're a values-driven organization where the best people come because they feel like they can do their best work here. We're also making an incredibly positive impact on sustainability. What we do matters. And we're doing it because it's the right thing to do and because it's a good business opportunity. We're proud of the improvements we've made in our company. You know that the world has changed. People's expectations have changed. Digital has changed everything. You can operate every business with the precision of a digital business, and every business needs to be digital going forward. So we've begun that transformation here at Acuity Brands. The process we use is called Better, Smarter, Faster, and it is exactly what the name implies. Better, Smarter, Faster is our process that takes the best of lean and the best of digital product development, and it starts from a very simple premise. which is that the satisfaction of the end user, the customer, is all that really matters. And so we identify what's going to drive that satisfaction. We compare that to what we currently do, including data to understand how are we really doing. And then we chart a path that gets us from where we are to as close as we possibly can to the art of the possible. And then we put it in front of customers and we do it again and again and again so that we continuously improve. As we get better, smarter, and faster, it's more and more important to be focused on where we're going. I like to say that life is lived in the windshield and not the rearview mirror. And so as we accelerate the pace of our organization, it's even more important to focus on where we're going and how we're getting there so that we can operate with precision and consistency going forward. So the core of any company is people. And I am super pleased with the collection of people that we are bringing together here at Acuity Brands. talented people who have been in the company for a long time, and new people who are bringing fresh ideas, perspectives, and experiences mostly around technology as we bring them together in a unique collection of talent. You need look no further than leaders of our two segments to demonstrate the talent that we're bringing together. Trevor Palmer is a veteran of Acuity Brands, and he's off to a great start leading the lighting and lighting controls business. Trevor understands technology. He's an innovator at heart. He's driving the product vitality and the pace of operation in the business and leading to significant improvements that you're seeing. Peter has been a leader in the technology industry all the way from startups to the largest technology companies in the world. He knows how to spot new technologies, new business models, and he's a talent magnet. And he's demonstrated the ability to put all those things together and build large businesses. When we talk about the impact that we can have, I'm really proud of how our whole team has come together to make a material impact in a positive way.